University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research Supervised Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Achievement and Creative Work May 2021 Not That Bad: Lessons Women Learn in a Rape Culture Sydney J. Selman University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/eureca Part of the Law and Gender Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Selman, Sydney J., "Not That Bad: Lessons Women Learn in a Rape Culture" (2021). EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement. https://trace.tennessee.edu/eureca/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Supervised Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Work at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 43. Not That Bad: Lessons Women Learn in a Rape Culture Author: Sydney Selman Mentor: Dr. Robin Nicks Introduction Social Implications “The Ways We Are “Utmost Resistance” Taught to Be a Girl” By V. L. Seek In 2018, Roxane Gay assembled an anthology that • Rape culture manufactures a system of By xTx addresses the severity of rape culture, rejecting the categorizing certain acts as more acceptable than V. L. Seek writes about her experience in law school, others, where victims who do not fit within the “real concentrating on how legal precedents undermine common belief that some sexually violent acts, xTx explores several lessons she learned throughout rape” stereotype are less likely to be believed rape and how law school may validate rape culture. compared to others, are not that bad. This collection, childhood on “just what happens when you are a girl” • The cultural insistence on trying to distinguish titled Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, (116). These lessons reveal the prevalence of rape between types of rape amplifies not that bad A Lesson on Memory compiles pieces from 30 authors and sheds lights on culture, showcasing how it shapes a person’s beliefs • Seek blames herself for drinking and normalizes how the notion of not that bad contributes to a broader and how everyone can play a role in ending rape. structural social problem involving sexual violence. DATE RAPE: rape committed by a person involved in her rape because ”it was not that bad” (181) a romantic or potential relationship with the victim • Alcohol plays a role in dismissing rape because This social problem, known as rape culture, trivializes A Lesson on Why Children Keep Quiet GRAY RAPE: sex that falls somewhere between victims often cannot remember all the details sexual violence and shifts blame onto the victim. In the • xTx describes a time in elementary school when consent and denial regardless of relationship • Case precedent illustrates how the legal standard anthology, authors xTx and V. L. Seek recount their her friend’s brothers “felt [her] perfectly flat chest, undermines her experience because the lack of experiences with rape culture and the notion of not their slimy hot tongues pushing into [her] mouth, • These terms admirably convey the idea that not all “utmost resistance” deems her rape as less that bad, unveiling the distinct ways this culture is alien and gross” where she did nothing but learn rape is a masked stranger in the bushes, but they legitimate than others reproduced throughout that “sometimes [girls] will be forced into things erroneously reinforce the idea not all rape is equal • If we take all rape allegations seriously and teach childhood and within the [they] don’t want to do” (117-118) • They also inherently shape a young person’s people not to rape, we can resolve this problem legal education system. • Children don’t tell others about what happened to understanding that some forms of rape are not as This project uses their them out of fear they may be punished and find bad as they could be, where children and young “There must be the utmost resistance by the woman testimonies to guide our that staying quiet is much easier adults internalize the belief that women are objects by all means within her power.” STATE V. MCCLAIN (1914) interpretation of rape • She shared only some details with her parents and rape is their fault culture so we can begin because she feared telling everything would “make A Lesson on How Victims are Discredited in Court to understand just how them see the bad” in her (118) • Law students learn to ask intrusive questions that bad it really is and start A Legal Perspective • We must establish ourselves as safe spaces for discredit victims, not to empathize with them working toward a future children, so they do not internalize their discomfort • Accusatory questions shift blame onto the victim free from sexual • The presumption of innocence until proven guilty is or assume rape is just a fact of life rather than the rapist, creating an unreasonable Source: HarperCollins Publishers violence. a sacred principle in the U.S. legal system and burden of proof for victims requires the State to carry the burden of proof A Lesson on How Rape Victims Feel Responsible • Our culture presumes innocence on the part of the • Rape is one of the few crimes where people equate • She blames herself for seducing her father’s friend What is Rape Culture? assailant while finding any possible reason to this presumption to actual innocence; in other when he begins petting her, because she wore demolish victims’ credibility RAPE CULTURE: a society or environment whose emotionally charged cases, the public preemptively shorts and a halter top, but decides that it was not • To create a world free from rape, the law must prevailing social attitudes normalize sexual violence decides whether the accused committed the crime as bad as other rape experiences (119-120) adapt to support victims who come forward and and blame sexual assault victims • People struggle to believe that celebrities, political • Addresses the idea that girls are responsible for schools must teach their students exactly how figures, or people they know could ever rape; their rape because of how they dress, despite the • Second-wave feminism first coined the term rape however, this turns rape not into a “victimless” reality that rapists will rape regardless of outfit Seek’s testimony shows there is not one specific way culture in the 1970s to draw attention to society crime but into a “perpetratorless” crime • Schools that enforce dress codes propagate to combat sexual violence, but it can start with trusting normalizing sexual violence • Victims are viewed as liars who must be disproved institutionalized slut shaming and rape culture victims and accepting just how bad rape culture is. • Rape culture saturates every corner of our society instead of supported, opening the door for victims • In a rape culture, victims find self-blame in arbitrary so thoroughly that people struggle to understand to undergo grueling questioning that systemically reasons; the only way to change is to label these what constitutes rape culture dismantles their credibility reasons as irrelevant to why rapists rape Conclusion • Includes rape jokes, cat-calling, policing women’s • These questions become new ways to blame dress, sexualized banter, hostile juries, gendered victims for the assailant’s crime Experiencing rape is not just how it is in life and “it’s Both essays can serve as a tool to guide our violence in video games, hospitals refusing rape not just ‘what you get’ for being a girl” (127). Even understanding of rape culture, using their experiences How much did you drink? What were you kits, and paltry sentencing trivialized acts are traumatizing, and these acts must to identify products of rape culture in our lives every wearing? Did you ever have sexual relations day. Their testimonies provide an outline for readers • Rape culture has become so trivialized, our society be identified as products of rape culture in order to with him before? How many, would you say? Did you to reflect on their own contributions to rape culture, so has adopted the belief that some rape behaviors end collective tolerance and change the status quo. ever say no? You didn’t scream? But it’s hard that in the future they may step in and speak up for are not as bad as others to remember what happened that day, isn’t it? others to ultimately help put an end to sexual violence. McEwan, Melissa. “Date Rape: Just ‘A Disagreement Between Two Lovers.” Shakesville, 18 Dec. 2007. References McEwan, Melissa. “Rape Culture 101.” Shakesville, 9 Oct. 2009. Berger, Vivian. “Man’s Trial, Woman’s Tribulation: Rape Cases in the Courtroom.” Columbia Law Review, vol. 77, no. 1, 1977, pp. 1-103. O’Neal, Eryn Nicole. “‘Victim is Not Credible’: The Influence of Rape Culture on Police Perceptions of Sexual Assault Complainants.” Justice Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1, 2017, pp. 127-160. England, Deborah C. “What is Date Rape?.” Nolo. Seek, V. L. “Utmost Resistance.” Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, edited by Roxane Gay, HarperCollins, 2018, pp. 177-187. Fraser, Courtney. “From ‘Ladies First’ to ’Asking for it’: Benevolent Sexism in the Maintence of Rape Culture.” California Law Review, vol. 103, no. 1, 2015, pp. 141-204. Stepp, Laura S. “A New Kind of Date Rape.” Cosmopolitan, 11 Sept. 2007. Harding, Kate. Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rate Culture—And What We Can Do About It.